Abstract

The present work is directed towards the impacts of Détente InstantanéeContrôléeDIC (French, for instant controlled pressure-drop) in terms of decaffeination and drying of Ethiopian green coffee beans (GCBs).DICconsisted in subjecting the product to a high-pressure saturated steam during some seconds and ended with an abrupt pressure drop towards a vacuum. A conventional aqueous extraction and a hot air-drying took place after DIC treatment. Inthis study, Response Surface Method (RSM) was used withDIC saturated steam pressure P, thermal treatment time t, and initial moisture content W asthe independent variables. Both direct DICextract recovered from the vacuum tank and the aqueous extracts wereanalyzed and quantified using the reversed phase-HPLC. With decaffeination ratiosas dependent variables, P and Wwere the most significant operating parameters; whilet was much weaker.Total decaffeination ratio could reach 99.5% after DIC treatment at specificconditions of W=11.00% db, P=0.1 MPa, and t=35swhile it was only 58% when achieved with untreated raw material.

The effective diffusivity and the starting accessibility were calculated from the diffusion/surface interaction kinetic model of hotair drying after DIC treatment. They dramatically increased with P and t while W had a weak impact.Thus, at the optimized DICconditions, and increased from 0.33 to 12.60 10-10m² s-1and from 0.75 to 11.53 g/100 g db, respectively. Drying time needed to reach 5% db became 60 min instead of 528 min for untreated raw material.

RSM analysis showed that the DIC saturated steam pressure P and the initial moisture content W were the most significant variables both affecting the decaffeination ratio; the impact of the total thermal processing time t was much weaker. Total decaffeination ratio could reach 99.5% after DIC treatment at specific conditions of W=11.00% db, P=0.1 MPa, and t=35 s while it was only 58% when achieved with untreated raw material.

Using diffusion/surface interaction model of hot-air drying kinetics just after DIC treatment, we could observe that DIC expansion dramatically improved the drying kinetic parameters, with P and t as the most significant DIC operating parameters while the impact of W was much weaker. Thus, the optimized DIC treatment allowed the effective diffusivity and the starting accessibility to increase from 0.33 10-10 m² s-1 and 0.75 g/100 g db to 12.60 10-10 m² s-1 and 11.53 g/100 g db, respectively. Drying time needed to reach 5% db became 60 min instead of 528 min for untreated raw material.

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